We think of this as prediction reasoning, a way of thinking based on the assumption that the future is going to be pretty much like the past. And it is wonderful—in certain situations.

Let’s say you want to drive from Boston to New York. You could pick up a map, or use something like Map Quest or Google maps, and proceed in an extremely logical fashion because everything (except traffic and road repairs) is known.

You know where you are: Boston. And you know where you want to go: New York. And so you can examine various routes to get there and pick the optimal one based on what you care about—getting there in the short amount of time; paying the minimum amount of tolls; taking the most scenic route, whatever.

Then you gather up the necessary resources—you fill up your car; buy a train ticket, hop a bus or whatever—and head off confident you are going to be successful. And if you get off course—and the traffic around New Haven can be confusing to uninitiated drivers—you can figure out how to get back on track fairly easily.

Because it works so well in these kinds of situations—and countless others you can think of—we (like you) became accustomed to using prediction reasoning all the time. And like anything, if you do something over and over, it becomes a habit. Your view of the world becomes conditioned.

And yet . . .

Not everything can be foreseen (and thus predicted).

Let’s go back to our travel example, except this time you are walking along, minding your own business, and you step on a hidden trap door. You plummet along a chute and finally land on something that feels solid underneath you. But it’s absolutely pitch black. You can't see a thing, smell a thing, taste a thing or really feel anything other than what you are standing on. The only thing you hear is the faint sound of children playing far off in the distance. In this kind of situation, or any time you are heading off into the unknown like creating a new product or service, the logic of prediction reasoning is of little use. You can’t plan; you can’t gather resources because you don’t know what you will need; you can’t optimize since you aren’t certain where you are going or what are the various ways of getting there.

And that’s why you are the biggest problem when it comes to your own success. If you keep using prediction reasoning in situations which are simply not predictable, you are bound to be disappointed and frustrated.

You need a different approach.

Our suggestion. Borrow from the people who are best at dealing with the unknown—your peers. More specifically serial entrepreneurs. People who have started two or more successful companies.

In the face of an unknown future, they act. More specifically they:

1. Take a small (smart) step forward. In our trap door example, they would take a small step toward the children’s voices. In starting a new business, it might be asking potential customers what they think about the idea.

2. Pause to see what they learned by doing so. Gee, the ground seems awfully squishy over there, I better step back and try a different direction. Or, in talking to people about your idea of opening a new restaurant, they don’t seem thrilled. There are a lot of restaurants in the area, but if you could offer complete dinners they could pick up on the way home and reheat once they got there, they would be thrilled.

3. Build that learning into what they do next. (Take a different step in a different direction to see what happens as you try to escape; show potential customers sample menus for your now take-out dinner idea.

This process of: Act; Learn; Build, as we have come to think about it, as we sent about researching our book (Just Start: Take Action. Embrace uncertainty. Create the Future) repeats until they are happy with the result—you’ve escaped; your business is up or running; or in the case of the business idea, you decide you can’t afford or don’t want to continue.

It’s a far cry from the “plan, optimize, execute” of prediction reasoning. But it is the best way of achieving your goals today.